RESTORE4Cs has released Policy Brief 8: “Advancing a Coherent Framework for Assessing European Coastal Wetland Condition”.
Coastal wetlands are among Europe’s most productive and valuable ecosystems. They support biodiversity, protect coastlines from flooding, store carbon, and sustain livelihoods. Yet despite their importance, coastal wetlands remain poorly defined and inconsistently monitored within European policy frameworks, resulting in fragmented data, limited comparability, and weakened management and restoration efforts.
RESTORE4Cs Policy Brief 8 addresses this challenge by advancing a harmonised definition, mapping approach, and assessment framework for European coastal wetlands, strengthening the scientific basis for EU nature, water, and climate policies.
A Harmonised Definition for the Land-sea Continuum
Building on the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands, RESTORE4Cs proposes a definition that fully captures the land-sea continuum where salt, brackish, and freshwater systems interact. This approach recognises the diversity of coastal wetland habitats across Europe, including tidal marshes, intertidal flats, seagrass meadows, lagoons, estuaries, deltas, freshwater marshes, creeks, rice fields, and saltpans.
By moving beyond fragmented ecosystem categories, the framework ensures that ecologically and climatically important coastal wetlands are no longer overlooked in policy and planning.
Europe’s First Consistent Map of Coastal Wetlands
Using a harmonised spatial methodology, RESTORE4Cs has produced the first EU-wide hydro-ecological baseline map of coastal wetlands, integrating watershed delineation, elevation thresholds, hydrological sub-basins, coastal influence zones, and flood and tidal dynamics.
The results show that:
- European coastal wetlands cover ~238,780 km², representing 36.3% of Europe’s total wetland area.
- 33% are marine waters, 14% strictly coastal habitats, and 53% other wetland types within coastal watersheds.
- The largest wetland areas occur in deltas and estuaries, particularly in the Atlantic (47.5%), Boreal (14.3%), and Mediterranean (11.6%) regions.
Ongoing Loss and Growing Pressures
Despite their scale and importance, Europe’s coastal wetlands continue to decline. Between 2000 and 2018, coastal wetlands decreased by 1.1%, mainly due to urbanisation and agricultural expansion. Climate change, land-use change, pollution, and invasive species remain major drivers of degradation.
While some improvements are visible, such as reduced nutrient pressures linked to EU policies, biodiversity indicators show persistent declines, and long-term trends point to a gradual erosion of ecological resilience.
A Policy-Relevant Framework for Monitoring Condition
RESTORE4Cs developed a harmonised, policy-relevant indicator set aligned with the MAES2IPBES framework, assessing:
- Physical, chemical, compositional, structural, functional, and landscape characteristics of coastal wetlands
- Direct drivers such as climate change, land-use change, pollution, water exploitation, and invasive species
This approach enables consistent identification of degradation hotspots, supports restoration prioritisation, and improves investment targeting across Member States.
Supporting EU and Global Policy Ambitions
Integrating this definition and monitoring framework into decision-making is essential to achieving the objectives of:
- The EU Nature Restoration Regulation
- The EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030
- The Water Framework Directive
- The Marine Strategy Framework Directive
- The LULUCF Regulation
- The Ramsar Convention on Wetlands
Key Policy Recommendations
Policy Brief 8 calls for:
- Strengthening Europe’s knowledge base through integrated and regularly updated monitoring
- Embedding harmonised scientific indicators into EU policy implementation
- Improving coherence across water, nature, climate, and agricultural policies
By providing a shared scientific foundation, RESTORE4Cs supports more effective conservation, restoration, and long-term resilience of Europe’s coastal wetlands.
Read and download the 8th Policy Brief in the Case Pilot languages (Romanian, Portuguese, Dutch, Lithuanian, French, and Spanish) here.
Read the full RESTORE4Cs 8th Policy Brief below:
